CHAPTER 08. AN OUTLINE OF THE SOCIAL DEFAULT IN TERMS OF AUGMENTED BEHAVIOURISM.
- INTRODUCTION.
- PART ONE - [T] FIELD THEORY OF ASSOCIATIONISM.
- PART TWO - PROCESS OF SOCIAL DEFAULT.
- PART THREE - AN AUGMENTATION OF THE BEHAVIOURIST
ASSUMPTION. (SIMPLICITY TO COMPLEXITY.)
Introduction.
This section of 'numbers and agreements' will present an objectivist and mechanistic view of behaviour that is entirely derivable by chemical responses.
The appearance of 'soul-less' chemical descriptions for the transactions and activity of Being, however, in no way precludes 'Divinity' as a legitimate discourse. The reality appears to be in this case, not: 'if consciousness arises in matter', but how much of soul consciousness is being withheld from material discourse. This issue will be addressed in a later section in terms of Ethnographic distortion in artefacts and information.
PART 1. [T] ASSOCIATIONISM
Associations arise in the biology of memory.
Part 1 will outline a model for the biology of associationism.
Aristotle, in his Essay on memory proposed three relations between observed elements that led to the formation of associations.
1. similarity
2. contrast
3. contiguity
4. to which I would add 'biological performance'
e.g. diet, age, damage.
The excitation strength of the stimulus, its recency and frequency will drive the formation of new associations and re-inforce or contradict older associations causing associative distortion or 'interference'.
Vividness a strong sense of unique identity within the congruence of a given context with time may persist or diminish with time.
The recency and intensity of excitation if persistently applied and re-inforced would forge associative chains in context. These would perhaps facilitate new learning strategies in the future.
Contrast is another means by which one learns associations, this may be perceived as 'incongruence' in any social context. The levels of intensity of which contend in inverse proportion with that which is Similar.
Perceptions therefore when confronted by an unusual learning situation that require adaptation must identify both contextual congruence, through the similarity of previous learning and experience and that which is truly incongruent.
By observing and measuring the transactions within the new congruence and incongruence, one may isolate that which is unique and unfamiliar by excluding the new versions of 'similar'. Re-establishing and chaining through backward association, previous similarities to the current similarity, behavioural 'levelling' or acclimatisation can occur.
A new Associative Field Theory.
Using the tripartite essentialist system [T] which is an objectivist psychology driven by the basic rules of physical and chemical interactions, emergence and chaos theory, field theory etc, it becomes possible to construct a functional picture of associationism that uses simple rules to account for complex processes.
The [T]; personality, memory and cognition may therefore comprise of three distinct zones plus a learning modality or postponement created by biological chaos (X)
- chronologically remote associations.
X. atemporal trauma-based disassociation.
- chronologically 'mediate' or middle distance memory.
- current and contextually emergent associative facilitation.
This system of association can be therefore meaningfully modelled using the Language [A], where its 27 possible events at time1 become a complete and limited picture of [1-729] associational states of integrity or disintegrity in any given context at time2.
Trauma, here, does not relinquish the right of the individual to re-educate for better health and success as it may be viewed as a temporal postponement of life chances and goals.
If the traumatised individuals goals are irretrievable due to contextual circumstances however, then other mediate associations that could be both productive and relatively undamaged could be identified.
A strategy for healing a trauma victim may therefore be to reach back in associative time for a mediate associative and creative strategy that was underused, misused or previously underdeployed or undeployed and re-stream the associative consciousness towards a desirable goal in a new social context.
[T] Psychology has the following semantic structure in any Context C.
MACRO Remote Association
MESO Mediate Association
MICRO Emergent Associative Facilitation in Context.
A sense of Biological comfort in any given social or peer group zone is denoted as 'Levelling' in both Lewin's Field theory in psychology and in Köhler's.
Lewin noted that there was observable biochemical credence to the distribution patterns of individuals and social groups.
Wolfgang Köhler, a contemporary, posited that physical biology is not independent of electromagnetic lines of force and that the psychological process can be driven by and even 'dependent' on the electromagnetic spectrum.
The equilibrium between individual parameters and individual strengths is in continual interaction and challenge with the physical world, its parameters, stressors and excitators.
[e.g. forward and backward chaining, inhibitors etc]
Associative Field Theory, therefore, presents a unifying behaviourist model driven entirely by physical objectivism i.e. non-arbitrary physical (Universal) laws.
A [T] Psychological World Model for individual learning and a socially successful individual would have the creative output of the individual facilitated on a platform of social interaction.
i.e.
MACRO CONTEXT AND INDIVIDUAL
MESO BIOLOGICAL COMFORT ZONE
MICRO CONTEXT AND WORLD
In this situation, the individual is comfortable with the world and can relate to and operate within and transfer values, information and assets to the world. This is called 'levelling' by Lewin [1952].
In contrast, where the transference gradient runs against the individual because of unfamiliar social or environmental placement or inappropriate learning strategies in either past and, or present - the individual may become relatively 'uncomfortable' and disassociate from the learning environment. This is called 'sharpening' by Lewin [1952].
i.e.
MACRO CONTEXT AND WORLD
MESO BIOLOGICALLY INTOLERABLE PERSONAL SPACE
MICRO CONTEXT AND INDIVIDUAL
The objectivism of [T] when added to previous research into the Philosophy and Empiricism of Mind which also includes the much more relevant massive computational research of the late 20th century can solve the major paradoxes of psychological doctrine.
None of the ideas from a [T] based Psychology would have been possible without the freedom of global information and publication facilitated by a very highly technological Society.
Such information from which to draw comparison by analysis was not available to; Kant, Hume etc, and neither was such a level of scientific empiricism available to Newton or Darwin, or indeed Einstein.
Although the traditional British 19th Century empiricist philosophers (Locke, Berkley, Hume, and Mills and Bentham in the 20th Century etc.) wrote copiously about their feelings about good social performance, it was left to the scientific approach beginning with Ebbinghaus in 1885, and Pavlov in 1904, and then Thorndike's work on association called 'connectionism' c.a. 1940's to become the rational foundation upon which Watson c.a. 1940's built behaviourism.
This took associationism out of the realm of 'sensations' and 'ideas' into the methodology of empiricism with its 'stimulii' and 'responses'. These could be objectively measured as behavioural responses.
In recent years writes Reber, 1985, associationism has 'lost some of its explanatory power in fields such as; perception, cognition, psycholinguistics, developmental psychology and the like mostly because of the compelling feeling that most cognitive processes are too complex to yield to an analysis based simply on associative connections.'
Edelman in his research into biological chaos and complexity sought to bridge the gap in reality that the Cognitive Sciences had subsequently created in the Philosophy of Mind, by using a computer sciences approach to psychology and intelligence. Neurobiological and linguistic research in the latter half of the 20th Century assumed that 'people behave according to knowledge made up of symbolic mental representations. Cognition consists of the manipulation of these symbols. .. The efficacy of such processes resides in the possibility of interpreting items as symbols in an abstract and well-defined way, according to a set of unequivocal rules.' p13.
Edelman's issue was that 'the mind cannot proceed 'liberally' - that is (Cognitivism) was disregarding a large body of evidence that undermines the view that the brain is a kind of computer. (Cognitivism), ignores evidence showing that the way in which the categorisation of objects and events occurs in animals does not at all resemble logic or computation.'
Edelman as a scientist rejects the inherent irrationality within classic views of essentialism no doubt because of their ultimately arbitrary nature and performance within the Universality of domains, objects and labels.
Tripartite Essentialism, however is an Objectivist Essentialism that predicates upon the sufficiency and universality of simple physical laws of transaction to describe both the behaviour of the world and the behaviour of the mind.
In Chapter 3 of his book called 'Bright Air, Brilliant Fire' pub. Penguin 1994, ISBN 0-14-017244-0, Edelman quotes James Clerk Maxwell 'The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.'
Edelman found that although the mind was driven by biology, it also was confronted simultaneously with the Turing problem that halted the computational models of the Cognitivist school of Artificial Intelligence.
i.e. an infinity of labels and objects confounds rational deductive thought.
Tripartite Essentialism overcomes the Turing problem both in computational logic and in behaviourism as it is solely dependent on a basic and universal transaction model of; some A to some B through some common C (and or in relation to some other intervening modality D).
This found variously and universally in Nature as Maxwell had predicted as; Fajan's Rules in Chemistry, Osmosis in Biology, Ohm's Law in electricity, Field Theory in Psychology by both Köhler and Lewin.
The brain as a [T] Essentialist computer answering to the logic of function and context becomes a more viable proposition than simply discarding the computer model as Edelmann is currently led to do.
In modern research into a behavioural programming system called Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), remote associations formed during the years of youth may have produced various types of sensory-associated psychology, linguistics and behaviour that manifest in their current social vocabulary.
e.g. 1 'tactile' ('I feel that ....')
e.g. 2 'visual' ('I see that .....')
e.g. 3 'auditory' ('I hear that ...') etc.
Here is the assertion from social data that the being is led to associate with their strongest senses and that these associations take logical computational structures.
Subsequent and arbitrary biological deterioration of the senses during some intervening years between youth and the present may have caused a requirement for a life strategy for sensory fulfilment to change.
For example, the person today may realistically derive social success from being an 'auditory' person.
However, biological trauma or deterioration in the intervening years between youth and the present may have caused the retention of a redundant associative vocabulary that depresses the individuals expectations. More recent strategies to re-implement youthful sensory expectations may have caused inappropriate social returns and therefore a feeling of personal (and biological) insufficiency.
The biology and gerontology of the body are seen to direct and drive the psychology of behaviour.
The older personality may then have a crisis of and expression and social recourse, where modes of expression are now felt to be inadequate.
Any number of biological and systemic catastrophes and sensory injuries may render remote memories and associative driving dysfunctional.
In NLP, therefore, if a person says that ('I see that ..'), they may not immediately be classified as a 'visual' personality if they are wearing glasses illustrating massive optical compensation. It may be, however, that the optical trauma created an associative inhibition and that no new learning strategy has since evolved because of this.
[T] Field Theory in Associology, which incorporates Objectivist and Behaviourist approaches may have recourse to a more complicated and context-sensitive version of NLP. It is the [T] Psychology strategy, however, that enables a recursion-free, context-sensitive, objective and programmable Philosophy of Mind to supersede the relatively uninformed dilemmas of the 20th Century.
There follows an outline of a [T] Psychology social strategy that models an empirical approach to social and psychological failure or rules default in the context of the tools of psychology being utilised as a vehicle facilitating social recovery.
PART 3. SOCIAL DEFAULT AND PSYCHOTIC
INDIVIDUALITY.
The individual, having defaulted on some social rules has been confronted with a situation where their social expectations have been aberrantly compromised.
Has, therefore, the driving cause been inflicted by self or other?
(1). Biological Disorientation.
(2). Other Disorientation.
(3). Simultaneous failure.
(4). Personal coping strategy.
(1). BIOLOGICAL DISORIENTATION.
Human biological reproductive cycles produce in both sexes of humanity large infusions of hormones from the endocrine system. Whether at puberty, where further androgens and oestrogens further mature sexual potential. In the elderly, the sudden decline of such hormones at menopause may also alter behaviour.
The 'hysterical' (as pertaining to womb) female patients of Dr Jung and Dr Freud may also have been responding to the cycles of the moon within their reproductive behaviours and attitudes.
The Biological disorientation may also result from some systemic failure in the organs or bones that may have a physical disease. psychological integrity and associational strategies of the individual have been compromised by the innate biological drive (endocrine system). This has exacerbated any inadequacy within peer group performance and also degrees of perception of social rejection. The degree of social compromise may be at its most severe in more unusual and inaccessible social groups. These may be appreciated by the individual, but where in undue stress cannot now be facilitated by the individual's lack of perspective on the danger presented to (his) disintegrating psychology by the internal dynamics of the unfamiliar group.
Social appeasement constructs would be influenced by biochemical disorientation caused by gonadotropins from the endocrine system at Puberty and in sexual development and other biological cycles.
Psychological performance in this respect could also be compromised by some ongoing physical disease or poor structural and metabolic performance of the body.
(2). OTHER SOCIAL DISORIENTATION.
Other Disorientationfrom Second or Third party Social Damage: From Social Peer group at; home, work or play may have been unusually damaging. Also some environmental disaster resulting from unusual circumstances may have shattered their equilibrium. If the individuals social expectations have been severely traumatised then this compromise has caused a lack of re-emergent psychological stability or re-adjustment within time. Within a regulated but aberrant social context, persistent infringement and subsequent biological issues arising would increase both psychological and metabolic stress to high levels of disorientation.
The degree of inhibition within the integrity of associative constructs would require evaluative diagnostic research such that a better strategy for the recovery of the associations useful in a similar social context could be later deployed after a period of prescribed disassociative and biological rest.
Every learning situation is a stressful situation driven or facilitated by the endocrine system e.g. gonadotropins, the adrenal cortex, etc
In a traumatic situation, however, the individuals internal library of associations and personal educational tools acquired by previous associative reasoning and facilitated by; e.g. physical, chromatic and linguistic expression, has been compromised.
A traumatic interlude of social interruption has occurred such that further acquisitions have been hindered by aberrant associative constructs, either with self and, or other.
The loading in this learning situation has been excessive, therefore, deselection of the learning situation, but not the learning strategy, would enable the passage of normative time to re-establish a psychological equilibrium (in a social and facilitative context). In time, the re-application of this older and once-failed strategy, again to personal progress within society could be re-enabled under evaluation.
If subsequent damage later occurs in a more normative environment that presented stressors that were initially representative of the levels of challenge to personal acquisition and contribution then there is also a failure of education at an individual level. There the expectations within the individuals original vision of this goal-orientated social environment, had been misinformed.
Healthy progress for the individual would require mature and educated and constructive discussion.
A state of social integrity is described by Lewin K, in his 'Field Theory in Psychology' [1952] as that in which an individual experiences the nurturing, rational communality of 'levelling'. In becoming disassociated, the individual is perceived to be irrational, selfish and 'sharp'.
As far as the individual is concerned there are a few issues that would need clearing up.
(3). Simultaneous failureof Individual and Society.
Unless otherwise politicised, the needs of the many (Demos) are greater than the needs of the one (Phobos). Individual recovery from Social aberrance must be weighed against the self-esteem of the individual such that the bias, perceptions and relevance of both the personal and social incongruence experienced can be later redressed legally or later mediated by more positive associationism.
The scepticism of RC Buck on the 'Logic of general behaviour systems theory' although dismissive of any central unifying principle in physics driving simplicity and complexity does present the intellectual loading problem presented to a disorientated individual in a confusing breakdown situation very well. He criticises ..'Every system has subsystems' and taking this together with 'every system has its environment' we are indeed confronted with limitless vistas of systems. One is unable to think of anything, or of any combination of things, which could not be regarded as a system. And, of course, a concept that applies to everything is logically empty.' Applying Buck's quotations to a badly behaving student worker e.g. at a badly behaving government fish farm and the dilemmas and arbitrary contradictions to social responsibilities that the confused people must produce .. The failing student may attempt to grasp their predicament.
'What would it be like to disprove the statement that every system had subsystems? If general systems theory can answer this question, the answer should certainly be provided. For such an answer would have to include a criterion for recognising something which is not a system; and possession of such a criterion would help immeasurably in clarifying the central concept of a system.